France has been on high alert following a string of jihadist attacks since early 2015, often by people who have become radicalised or claim to have acted in the name of the Islamic State group.

The woman was overpowered by a customer and supermarket employee. Picture: AFPSource:AFP

The 24-year-old assailant, who did not have a police record, was overpowered by a customer and two supermarket employees and taken into custody.

“I grabbed her wrists to get hold of the cutter,” said the customer, an electrician who gave only his first name, Sebastien.

“I asked her ‘why did you do it?’ She did not answer.”

The woman “was in a panic, she was afraid, she did not understand what was happening to her, she had no strength left,” Sebastien said.

Media and police at the scene. Picture: AFPSource:AFP

Police later searched her home to determine if she had any links to the Islamic State group, but Marchal said they found only an old Koran and an Algerian flag.

A computer was seized from the studio where she lived a few kilometres from the shop.

“We don’t yet know if this is a terrorist act, but in any case it was terrifying,” Marchal said.

The woman, who carried a physical handicap card, would undergo a psychiatric assessment.

More than 240 people have been killed in jihadist attacks since the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris in January 2015.

Police said that the two victims’ wounds were not life-threatening. Picture: AFPSource:AFP

Last month a knifeman shouting “Allahu Akbar” killed one person and wounded four others during a Saturday night attack in central Paris.

In March, a Franco-Moroccan man shot dead three people, including a policeman, at a supermarket in the southern town of Trebes before being killed by police. He had also killed the passenger of a car he hijacked in nearby Carcassonne.